Then add in the extra computing power to run digital ID
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Yes but, bearing in mind your title, could we use cow farts? 
Not apparently the problem, although the way my vegetarian friends fart you’d think so 
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That’ll be outsourced to a server farm in Chennai.
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Nice and secure then 
. Still a heck of a lot of heat they don’t need so even more AC to Keep it cool.
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Possibly less chance that a U.K. government minister leaving a laptop in a taxi, on a train, in a pub or at their sidepiece’s flat.
Meanwhile we are in even more trouble as global warming is causing tropical rainforests to die off thus turning them into net emitters of CO2 instead of the absorbers that we were all counting on…
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I am sorry, I simply don’t believe it (inner Victor Meldrew). The trees have been around a long long time and 1.5-2 degrees is not going to upset them. Plenty of other outside influences that could but need to see the real science. So much of this stuff is conjecture, extrapolation and bought off to cause influence. The ultra rich jetting around cause far more damage.
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So why are coral reefs dying off, Corona? That was in the papers at the weekend.
Not just the ultra rich, the skies over here in the SW sometimes look like a giant noughts and crosses game with all the contrails. N/S to Spain and Africa, E/W Middle East and N. America.
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Referring to my Friend Dr Howard Dryden, a lot is pollution and forever chemicals. It’s why some marine atols have banned sun creams and tooth pastes as these can seriously upset marine eco systems. Warming of the oceans not helping. Also some reefs are cyclic meaning they shed their living polyps and drift off to form new reefs leaving the old to just become dead limestone.
Dr. Dryden & The Missing Plankton: science, media & climate activism – GOES Foundation Dr. Dryden & The Missing Plankton: science, media & climate activism – GOES Foundation
Actually it does. And the “1.5 degrees” figure quoted is not just a bit of local difficulty but the long-term average rise in global temperature. That much average change leads to significant shifts in weather patterns locally, as in Australia, which cause droughts and hence the die-off of rainforest.
If you read the Australian article, it explains this.
A small rise in average global temperature heats up the oceans so a lot more water evaporates, turbo-charging weather systems around the world, resulting in more and worse hurricanes for example. And wind and water current patterns change, bringing droughts and flooding, which affect vegetation and animals as well as humans.
And as @Jennifer11 mentioned the coral reefs are very sensitive to changes in water temperature - they live at specific depths and if the water gets hotter they die. That then kills the fish and other life that subsists on them and the chain reaction continues.
Even in the short space of seven years that I lived in Turks & Caicos I saw a distinct change - once healthy coral beds turning to bleached desert, and fewer fish.
Yes chemicals from suncreams etc in the ocean have an effect, but coral reefs are dying in areas that get little or no tourism, so that’s not the only reason. Turks & Caicos had tourists but is not Benidorm; their numbers were relatively few and coral was affected even around uninhabited islands,.
Climate change caused by human activity is very real and extremely well documented by thousands and thousands of peer-reviewed studies. It’s not some crackpot theory dreamt up by killjoys who want people to stop driving sportscars.
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This is such a well known ridiculous argument, I’m not even going to bother to correct you. Just do some very basic research for the real answer. It’s not difficult.
Without your prompt I did indeed do some reading up on this last night. It seems the Australian trees have reached their maximum temperature during periods of high temperature. Not specifically to do with a 1.5+2 C increase in temperature but the problem is the ceiling height of the temperature these trees can take. They self regulate and when it’s hot protect themselves from increased water loss by closing off the vessels that deliver water to the leaves etc. if the temperature is too high for too long then they dehydrate and die.
Yes you are right a couple of degrees extra in that specific location might not matter - but just to clarify, the problem is not a 2C increase in one specific area such as Queensland, but that the 2C global average increase represents a lot of extra energy going into the atmosphere, which manifests itself as much bigger changes in some places in the world, and more extreme weather events.
So what’s happening is not a nice steady bump up in temperature that’s evenly distributed across the globe, it’s the shift in weather patterns and ocean currents, and the more frequent and more severe occurrence of extreme weather events, that’s doing the damage.
It’s long-lasting droughts at one end of the scale and heavier rainfall and snowfall at the other - not just warmer weather distributed evenly.
That’s how I understand it anyway, in layman’s terms - i am of course not a climate scientist! 
So just swinging this back to the original post, the data centres produce a heck of a lot of exactly what we are trying to avoid and it’s not like that energy is re purposed, no, just wasted into the already growing problems.
From what I studied last night which was specifically trees in Australia, it exactly the localised temperature responsible for the death of some forests. Yes I agree multifactorial issues are all coming together and focusing the problem.
I totally agree - building dedicated data centres for AI is very counter-productive.
Indeed, O Mighty Borealis, but the key point is that the 2C rise in average global temperature is just an indicator - what happens on a local level (as in Oz) can be much more extreme.
The fossil fuel lobby tend to assume that it’s evenly distributed and that 2 degrees warmer summers will just mean nicer days at the beach.
Why do we need data centers I can’t think of any real benefit to normal folk like me or am I missing the point?